


Enlightenment

by taichara



Category: Yoroiden Samurai Troopers | Ronin Warriors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 15:01:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6157410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taichara/pseuds/taichara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reality finally finds a crack through the layers of misdirection in Shuten's head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enlightenment

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: _there are people you may have forgotten existed_

Shuten waited -- paced the length of the display hall, if one be honest -- for Nasuti and the boy to return. 

There were some documents she'd wanted to retrieve before they made their attempt to find the Jewel, and that was fair, but the search of her office (once her grandfather's) failed to turn them up, and now she was off to archives of some sort with Jun in tow. He'd elected to remain behind, but time was slipping away and, wrapped in his own thoughts, he'd drifted from the small work-room to the gallery beyond.

The Old One's staff chimed softly with his steps, a rhythmic counterpoint to his wandering thoughts. There had so many changes in his life, as late. The torturous power Arago had flooded him with; the casting aside of his virtue principle, Loyalty betrayed in order to tear away the Demon from his soul.

And, for all that, he somehow survived; and here he was now waiting for a Yagyu girl to finish finding the results of her scholarship. He chuckled to himself; he'd never been one for study. The battlefield suited him better, for all the reputation he'd had for hailing from the 'old capital'.

Chime, chime; another circuit of the gallery, then another. Shuten found himself paying more attention to his surroundings, if only from bored curiosity -- even the building itself seemed odd, foreign. Not what he remembered, hazy as the memories were. 

But that was only reasonable, wasn't it? Arago would have dulled recollection of the mortal world, and his nightmare realm saw to the rest. Of course it was odd, now, even allowing for changes after unification.

But something else prickled at the back of his mind even as he studied the battered panoplies with their faded lacing and their cracked lacquer, the mended and re-mended weapons. Something that insisted these objects could not possibly have been maintained so poorly by their former owners.

The glassy cases held plaques as well as military gear, labels for their contents. Shuten began to skim one, and promptly needed to suppress a tiny growl of irritation. He was no scholar but he was hardly illiterate; why was the writing on the thing so hard to unravel?

Stubborn, he glared at the plaque and pieced the inscription together phrase by phrase. Yes, yes, that identification was obvious from the crests still attached to the banner, the find-spot was reasonable enough, allowing for travel, all seemed reasonable except the lack of a specific name.

Then he saw the date. Read it again. Disbelief washed over him.

_... Four hundred years ..._

Then the truth -- obvious, inescapable -- came rushing in. All that time lost. All those people -- friends, family, dependants, enemies, all -- lost, gone to dust. Four centuries gone to dust while he served as bloody-mouthed retainer to an inhuman lord.

The world had changed because of nothing more than _time_.

There could indeed be no return to who he once was.

It was overwhelming, heart-shattering.

And he was trapped in stunned shock like a fox in a snare, til Nasuti caught at his sleeve and drew him away ...


End file.
